Part 55

In the hand, which has twenty-seven bones--one more than the foot--and is a more wonderful "tool" than any which God has given to the lower animals, wonderful as their tools are, the sense of touch is stronger than in any other part of the body.

Suppose you put your fingers upon something very hot or very cold. "Quick as thought," as we say, you draw them away again. But before you did so, what had happened?

The nerves at the tip of your finger had sent a telegram straight home to the brain, "Too hot!" or "Too cold!" and the brain had telegraphed back to the fingers, "Keep out of the way of it!" whatever the hot or cold thing may have been.

To think, even for a moment, of these lightning messages running backwards and forwards, to and from the brain, gives us some little idea how very wonderful the brain itself must be, and also how God has made one part of the body to depend upon another.

Apart from the brain, the ear would be conscious of no sound, whether the soft wash of the waves along the shore, or the mighty roll of the thunder through the sky. On the other hand, none of these voices could reach the brain if God had not "planted the ear," and formed it so perfectly to receive the waves of sound which, striking upon its delicate little "drum," cause it to vibrate, and so are passed on by the nerve which takes messages to the brain. For it is the brain which takes charge of every "impression" conveyed to it by eye, ear, hand, nose, or palate; but how these impressions conveyed to the brain give rise to what we call "thoughts" and "ideas"--this is one of the secret things which belong to God, and of which He has not allowed the wisest man to say, "Oh yes, I understand all about it!"

And there is another secret thing which cannot be explained. The heart has been called "the fountain of life," because by it the blood, which is the life of the body, is kept in continual motion, and sent to every part. How little we think of it! But whether we are waking or sleeping, at work or at rest, this busy fountain still goes on playing. We may hear the throb of it, as it strikes against the chest, in its ceaseless working; and we may count these regular "beats," and find that there are about seventy-five of them every minute. It has been calculated that during an ordinarily long life there are three thousand millions of beats without a break. But what has set this fountain at work? and what keeps it going night and day without any thought or care of ours, all our life long? Of all this it can only be said, "We do not know; we cannot find out. God in His wisdom has so ordered it."

Many years ago a doctor, who had observed very carefully, and thought much about what he observed, found out that every time the heart beats, the blood rushes from it into a great curved tube called an artery, and so passes through tubes which, like the nerves, are constantly becoming finer and finer, to every part of the body.

He also discovered that the blood takes its journey back again to the heart by a different road: it does not return through these tubes, but through softer ones, called veins. Thus far he could go, and the story of the "circulation" of the blood is very interesting; but the cause of the heart's perpetual motion, and the blood's continuous flow, this he could not discover.

Is it not wonderful to think that this rapid motion of the fountain within us goes on so noiselessly that even a baby whose little heart has only just begun to beat, is not disturbed by it, as he sleeps in his cradle?

To all the "higher animals" God has given both heart and brain. He has also given them, in more or less degree, that mysterious sense of which we have spoken before, and of which we have had so many proofs; a sense which is not at all dependent upon reason or intellect, but is found in a less degree in men than in animals to which reason has not been given.

We have before noticed that by instinct and memory all the wants of the brute creation are met; God has given them all that they need to teach them to live, each in its own life, after its kind, and to provide for their young ones; but He has not given to the "beasts that perish" the power of, as we sometimes say, "putting this and that together," nor, as far as we know, of learning by experience; although it does seem as if the spiders, in making their webs, improve by practice.

Instinct teaches every living thing to get its own food, choosing that which is suited to itself, and rejecting that which is not. It teaches the bird or the insect to seek out a fit place in which to deposit its eggs, or to make a nest or "homie" for them, even before they are laid; and it can teach even such a free creature as a bird to leave for a time its airy life, and to sit patiently upon its eggs, even carefully turning them, as if it knew that the life of the unfledged nursling within the shell-wall depended upon its being kept warm.

Instinct leads the butterfly, as we have seen, to lay its eggs upon the leaf of the very tree upon which the caterpillar, when hatched, will feed--though its own food has been taken from flowers.

Instinct guides the swallow in its flight, as it leaves us in the autumn for the shores of Africa; and the redwing on its way from its summer home in the far North to winter in our warmer country--each arriving in its appointed season.

And so, as we study the habits of birds and beasts, we see how instinct everywhere guides and directs them; but what this sense is we cannot tell. It has been well remarked, that all that can rightly be said of it is, that it is "a guide which God, in His care for His creatures, has given them, and caused them to obey."

We also noticed in reading these verses that until man was formed, there was no lord over the Creation, but that to Adam God gave dominion over all; nothing was expected, and he was owned as head, God Himself bringing the creatures to him that they might receive their names from him, though Adam himself was still under God, and every benefit with which the Creator loaded him, only left him so much more bound to own His right over him.

As God has made us for Himself, He has given to every man, even the rudest savage, something within him which reminds him of One to whom he of right belongs; however far he may have got away from Him, or may have tried to satisfy his conscience--that "eye of the soul"--by seeking to please some idol-god which he has made for himself.

God has also given proof of His "eternal power and Godhead" by "the things that are made"--His glorious works in Creation.

Listen to what a Red chief, far away in North America, said to a missionary the other day:--

"I have long lost faith"--this was his confession--"in the old paganism. They know I have not cared for the old religion. I have neglected it. And I will tell you, missionary, why I have not believed in our old paganism for a long time.

"I hear God in the thunder, in the tempest, and in the storm; I see His power in the lightning that shivers the trees into kindling-wood; I see His goodness in giving us the moose, the reindeer, the beaver, and the bear; I see His loving-kindness in giving us, when the south winds blow, the ducks and geese; and when the snow and ice melt away, and our lakes and rivers are open again, I see how He fills them with fish. I have watched these things for years, and I see how every moon of the year He gives us something; and He has so arranged it that, if we are only industrious and careful, we can always have something to eat.

"So, thinking about these things which I had observed, I made up my mind years ago that this Great Spirit--so kind and so watchful and so loving--did not care for the beating of the conqueror's drum, or the shaking of the rattle of the medicine man. So for years I have had no religion.

"Missionary, what you have said to-day fills my heart, and satisfies my longings. It is just what I have been expecting to hear about the Great Spirit. I am glad you have come with this wonderful story; stay as long as you can." [Footnote: From By Canoe and Dog-Train, p. 119.]

Nothing more than the fact that man was made, not like even an angel or an archangel, but in the image of God, is needed to show how far beyond and above every creature he was; and, as no creature owed so much to the Creator, none was responsible to Him in the same way. No one had any right over him except the One who had made him for Himself, his Creator, without whom he would not have been.

"The ox knoweth its owner, and the ass his master's crib." (Isa. i. 3.)

God has made the animals faithful and affectionate, and there are many true and touching stories of the way in which they have attached themselves to those who have cared for them. A dog will devote itself to its own master, and even give its life for him; but no mere animal has that within him which can have to say to God and be in relationship with Him. And how sad it is to think that the only creature of God who could know Him is the one who has turned away from Him and listened to the spoiler!

At the beginning God could say of all Creation "very good"; though there is a wonderful beauty still--beauty everywhere if we have eyes to see it--He cannot say "very good" where decay, pain, sorrow, death are all around; where we grow weak and old, and even while we are young and strong, the most pleasant things tire us; where hatred and envy, shame and fear--all the sad feelings brought by sin--exist in the heart of the last and best of His creatures, to whom His voice and His presence once brought only joy. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." And who can say how terrible has been the change thus wrought?

Sad indeed is the wreck which Satan has made of God's fair Creation, but a sadder wreck still is the man whom He made upright; and yet the day is surely coming when round and round the throne of "Him that liveth for ever and ever" shall echo and re-echo the words, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created."